Assignment: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Working in groups of two or three, write an imaginary dialogue among two or more eighteenth-century characters or authors. You may select from any author we have read or any character in the plays, poems, essays, or novels we have read. Each student will research biographical, cultural, and critical background information about the character and then write dialogue for that character. Then you will collectively write/edit a script that will put into dialogue those characters/authors. You will be invited to perform the piece for the class. Scripts may include brief quotes from primary texts only, and those quotes can be included as part of close-reading dialogue/discussion of the ideas put forth by the authors/characters. Scripts should be roughly 12-15 pages. Finally, you will hand in a brief essay that explains the rationale for your writerly choices as well as a brief discussion of the major ideas raised by your script.

For more from this author, please see the essay in the Pedagogy section of this issue

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